Hey Guys,

I was twisting again last Saturday, 11am - 4pm and at about 3pm some guy asks me to do him a monkey. Now I do the simple one balloon monkey, nothing special, but for some damn reason, I popped about 10 balloons trying to make one. I had done a few before hand, but I think my hands were getting so tired (they had gone through the stiff finger stage) and I think I was either being too rough or too tired to concentrate. This of course made me look a right fool. The guy was cool about it, joking he was gonna call animal rights, as I killed so many monkeys. In the end I gave up and told him he was getting an Alien instead. Ten minutes later, someone else asked for a monkey and I did it first time, no pops!

Does this kinda thing happen to everyone?

Popsie, did you not know that they balloons just know when you are flustered.  
 :oops:  
They are like a naughty child sometimes. Just take a deep breath and talk to them quietly inside your head.   I usually talk to them in a calm soothing voice and say that I am in charge, not them. They usually work after that.
         
Well it works for me anyway!!!!!!!!!!
p.s. when they stop popping remember to thank them also.
 

Yes that has happened to me before on a couple of occasions. (And yes, it was very embarrassing at the time :oops: ).

I, of course, blamed all the pops on the person/persons wanting the balloon while taking no blame at all for tired fingers, a bad batch of balloons, or careless twisting while trying to hurry up and finish the design.

I asked them who was squeezing lemons 'cause everyone knows my balloons are allergic to lemons! I asked them if they had something against balloons and were they secretly balloon haters trying to get a balloon just so they could take it around the corner and stomp on it. I played up how scared I was to even try to inflate another balloon. I even went so far as to tell them to back up because they were upsetting my balloons which were behaving quite nicely until they approached. (The backing up part I suspect is what did the trick.  It gave me a bit of breathing room, both figuratively and literally.  And if by chance the problem had been a build up of static electricity coming from that person, which has happened before, it got me and the balloons far enough away from them so that I could continue twisting without problems.)

As embarrassing as it was to have so many balloons pop for just one creation, it turned into a very entertaining (but loud!) 'show' and generated a lot of laughter.  It also highlighted how fragile the balloons really are and that they should be handled with care.

Bonnie, The Balloon Lady (who would prefer to entertain without popping balloons.   )

hey popsie lets do a jam i will show some nice easy monkeys
and ther stuff

I thought you were talking about the music group!  

I thought it was just me being new to this!    :lol: